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How to Effectively Set Goals with Your Call Center Employees

By Jessica Suezin on May 9, 2018

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Updated: January 2020

Goal setting and self-improvement often go hand-in-hand, and nowhere is this truer than in the call center world.

Executives and managers understand that by setting goals both as an organization — particularly as departments and teams — a company is able to move in a measurable way, and even pivot in the direction they want to grow.

Developing clear and structured goals with your customer service reps is essential for you to be able to do this in your contact center. Using the S.M.A.R.T strategy in the goal-setting process will provide direction, focus, and help prioritize your call center team’s time and energy.

In a busy and bustling customer service department, having an agreed-upon set of milestones to guide productivity will help guide decisions, keep morale up, and even reduce agent turnover.

Here are some keys ways to work together as a team to create practical customer service team goals that will take your call center to the next level.

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The Top Customer Service Conferences to Attend in 2020

By Ben Ringshall on January 22, 2020

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Wondering what customer service or contact center conference to attend in 2020? We’ve got you covered.

Whatever anyone says, attending live events is essential if you want to keep up and keep involved with the industry around.

Not only is it a chance to find out what everyone is working on — and hopefully pick up some tips — but it’s also a chance to meet with our peers. And you shouldn’t underestimate how important that part is.

Particularly in an industry like customer support, it’s so important to be around people who are working on the same things and can understand what it’s like to be in our shoes. It’s fun, educational, and a great opportunity to build new relationships.

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Introducing The Crunch: Putting Out Big Customer Service Fires in 2020

By Samantha Mehra on January 20, 2020

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Happy 2020, Fonolo Followers!

Welcome to The Crunch, our *new* biweekly news roundup, where we give you the latest and greatest in customer service technology, news, and views. If you want to see these saying ‘Hello’ in your inbox this year, you can subscribe here. No fear. Let’s stop rhyming now and turn to the news at hand.

As always, the customer service space reads like a riveting novel, full of conflict, drama, beauty, disappointment, hope, taxes, unanswered phonecalls, and robots.

This week, we’ve noted some storylines that we think you should note, too. Continue reading →

The Golden Rules of Contact Center SLAs

By Samantha Mehra on September 18, 2018

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UPDATED JANUARY 2020:

As the official written contract shared between two parties, a service level agreement is a commitment between a vendor that ensures specific services will be delivered. It’s a promise you make to your clients that you will maintain the service levels that they and their customers expect.

Anyone who works in customer service, be it in retail, health or finance, should get to grips with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) — and fast. If you’re looking to do just that, you’ve come to the right place. In this crash course, we provide you with:

Contact center SLAs in a nutshell
How to set a winning service level for your organization
Why you should be wary of industry standards
How to meet your service delivery levels

Read on: You’ll be an expert in no time.

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Top 20 Customer Service Blogs You Have to Read in 2020

By Ben Ringshall on January 14, 2020

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Which customer service blog posts helped to shape the last decade for you?

When we look back at the customer support industry in 2010, we see a very different beast to the one we work in today.

Not only has technology changed the way we interact with customers, but it’s also massively changed the way we communicate with our peers within the industry. There are more customer experience management blogs and articles than ever before — not to mention the growing libraries of video and interactive content.

We’ve all come a long way since 2010, but we couldn’t have done it without some of the most prolific influencers to ever lay hands on a keyboard.

Here, we cover the 20 best customer service blogs and influencers to follow in 2020. You’ll recognize many of these names, and we encourage you to check out those that you haven’t come across yet; you won’t be disappointed. And as always: This list appears in no particular order. Continue reading →

Brand Spotlight: How Amazon Won Us All Over

By Janki Lodhia on January 10, 2020

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Ever since the retail industry has gotten a digital facelift, only a handful of brands have experienced unbeatable growth. Today, Amazon is a top-of-mind digital company that consumers are browsing all day long – and has quickly become THE retail giant.

Consumer behavior in the retail industry has changed entirely within the past decade. Most customers choose to make purchases from the within the safe walls of their homes via online retailers such as Amazon. Gone are the days when customers browsed stores relentlessly hoping to find what they’re looking for. While malls still exist (and thrive), every customer is aware of the option to purchase something online – usually at a fraction of the cost.

Online retailers like Amazon have caused the retail industry to shapeshift, now providing instant gratification and convenience to customers. Over the past few years, this has forced many brands to hop onto the e-commerce trend and in some cases, close their physical brick and mortar stores to survive. Here’s how.

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Contact Centers Move to the Cloud in 2020

By Ben Ringshall on January 9, 2020

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Advances in communication technology are forcing rapid change in the contact center.

To accommodate consumers’ growing expectations and provide 24/7 omnichannel customer support, we’re expecting to see a mass exodus, with as many as 70% of contact centers moving ‘to the cloud’ in the next 12-24 months.

Will your contact center be left behind?

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Beware False Scorecards for B2C Chat

By Shai Berger on January 8, 2020

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There’s an interesting and high-stakes battle taking place right now in the world of customer service: What will be the dominant text-based channel for B2C communications? SMS remains the most ubiquitous channel, but least flexible. Competing against it are the big corporate-owned messaging platforms: Messenger and WhatsApp (both from Facebook), Apple’s Business Chat, and Google’s offering called (for now) Google My Business Chat.

I recently gave a talk at the TADSummit conference on this battle and the challenges in measuring the progress. Slides are available here and video here.

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Contact Center Trends 2020: A New Age for the Contact Center

By Fonolo Team on December 17, 2019

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Change is the only constant trend.

Everything from the way we shop to how we listen to music has changed in the last two decades. This includes our experience as customers. Modern consumers are no longer willing to accept poor customer service. In fact, more than 80% of customers now say the experience a company provides is as important as its products.

It’s been a journey: The contact center evolved from the humble call center, as more channels of communication became commonplace. In order to keep up with the demands of modern consumers, the contact center is destined to evolve further, into the ‘Customer Experience Hub’ of the future.

As part of this, many businesses are already moving away from the view of call centers as ‘cost centers’ and towards one that views them as a centers of opportunity for businesses — one where the opportunities the center creates well outweigh the costs of running it.

With this ‘meta-trend’ to give us some context, here are three of our top trend predictions for the call center in 2020. Continue reading →

Phone for the Holidays: Fonolo’s Customer Service Picks for 2020

By Samantha Mehra on December 12, 2019

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A thoughtful human being on the other end of the line when you call for help.

An expertly-tied velvet bow adorning the top of a gift you purchased.

A hand-written note with charming keepsake tucked into a box containing your online purchase.

Empathy. Courtesy. Generosity. Humanity. Artfulness.

Whatever the customer service flourish we encounter on our journeys as consumers, we know when it works. At Fonolo, customer service is top of mind for every employee: Sun up, sun down. We see our customers offering humanity, agency, and choice to their own customers by offering them our patented Call-Backs, responsive widget, and Smart Portal. We see their hold times diminish by years, their customer satisfaction increase by multitides, and their revenue climbing and climbing.

Like many other brands invested in a customer-first approach, they get it.

At this time around the holiday season, on the eve of a new year of possibility, we cast a long, studied glance over the year that was. This year, I turned the microphone on our own Fonolonians to articulate 2019 in terms of customer service. We’re a group hyper-aware of when customer service works in other contexts. So, I asked: “What company, either local or online, was your favourite in terms of customer service in 2019? Who will truly innovate in 2020?”

Here’s what they had to say.

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